In the July 2025 edition of Plants, Pests and Pathogens, Dr. Lucy Bradley shares practical, research-based strategies for managing gardens and landscapes to be more resilient to increasing climate variability. This webinar focuses on actionable techniques to conserve resources and garden smarter for a more sustainable future.
00:00:00 Opening Announcements – Ariyah April
00:02:38 Feature Presentation: Pests and Plant Diseases Associated with Weather-Induced Stress – Dr. Lucy Bradley
00:53:57 Seasonal Be On the LookOut (BOLOs): Pests – Matt Bertone
01:07:39 Seasonal Be On the LookOut (BOLOs): Diseases – Mike Munster
01:19:04 Plant These for Pollinators: Mountain Mint – Charlotte Glen
01:31:16 Extension Master Gardener℠ Program Announcements – Charlotte Glen
ABOUT
Plants, Pests and Pathogens is a continuing education webinar series for N.C. Cooperative Extension agents and NC State Extension Master Gardener volunteers. The series equips them with knowledge and skills so they may better respond to home gardening questions and address the sustainable gardening education needs of North Carolinians.
Each webinar features the following speakers along with invited guests:
Dr. Lucy Bradley, Consumer and Community Horticulture Professor and Extension Specialist, NC State
Matt Bertone, Plant Disease and Insect Clinic Director
Mike Munster, Plant Disease Diagnostician for Commercial Ornamentals
Charlotte Glen, NC State Extension Master Gardener Program Manager
The webinar series is sponsored by the North Carolina State University Plant Disease and Insect Clinic, NC State Extension Master Gardener program, and the NC State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Departments of Entomology & Plant Pathology and Horticultural Science.
LEARN MORE
Plants, Pests and Pathogens series: https://go.ncsu.edu/ppp-index
NC State Plant Disease and Insect Clinic: https://pdic.ces.ncsu.edu
NC State Extension Master Gardener Program: https://emgv.ces.ncsu.edu
N.C. Cooperative Extension: https://ces.ncsu.edu
Welcome to Plants, Pests, and Pathogens.
I’m Ariyah April, program assistant for the NC State Extension Master Gardener Program.
We’re so excited to hear from today’s guest, Dr. Lucy Bradley, who’s going to present
on climate resilient strategies for home gardens and landscapes. We’re going
to have a few minutes after Lucy’s presentation for her to answer your questions.
So, please drop them in the chat. Afterward, Matt Bertone and Mike Munster at the NC State
Plant Disease and Insect Clinic will cover our BOLOs, or the plant pests and diseases
to be on the lookout for. To wrap it up, Charlotte Glenn is going to present the Plant
These for Pollinators feature on Mountain Mint, along with a few program announcements that you’re
not going to want to miss. Before we get started, a friendly reminder that next month’s PPP is going
to be a lot of fun. In our webinar on August 19th, Matt and Mike are going to solve some of your
plant pest and disease problems. So, please submit your questions and photos for them to review using
the photo submission form, and maybe we’ll put that link in the chat for you. Please submit your
questions and photos by Tuesday, August 12th. That gives them a little time to review them. And
you’re going to want to submit photos that are in focus and that clearly exhibit the problem. Maybe
include a common item like your fingernail for scale. And you do need a Google account that is
free to submit photos through the Google form. So our August webinar is definitely going to be
one of our liveliest PPP webinars. Thank you for participating. It is going to be a lot of fun.
I’m now going to turn it over to Dr. Lucy Bradley to present on climate resilient strategies
for home gardens and landscapes. Lucy is the consumer and community horticulture specialist in
the Department of Horticultural Science at NC State University. Lucy connects university research
with communities across the State through programs in home gardening, therapeutic horiculture,
community gardens, and preschool gardening. I’m going to stop with my screen now, Lucy,
and you are welcome to take it over and drive. All right. Are you seeing my screen? Yes, we are. Oh, yay. Okay, you can hear
me, too. Most excellent. Okay. Well, I’m delighted to be here with you guys
this morning and excited to be talking about climate resilient gardening.
Thank you for the nice introduction. So, when we look at what’s the climate change
impact on gardening, there’s a lot of of different factors for us to be thinking about. One of
them is just a greater intensity, right? So, we’re going to be having more rain faster and
harder. So, more likelihood for floods, but also more likelihood for droughts, hotter temperatures,
longer times between rains sometimes, heavier winds, you know, more hurricanes
and tornadoes, having temperature extremes. So, both day and nighttime temperatures setting new
high records and longer freeze-free seasons coming up. So, there’s also going to be increased
unpredictability. You know, we’re not going to have that lovely flow of anticipation of a
normal transition from winter to spring to summer to fall. There’s going to be fluctuations in that.
There will be intermittent, unexpected events in that. There’s going to be an increased risk
of fire and all of those things are going to lead to increased plant stress and people stress, but
plant stress that we’re going to be talking about and increased pest pressure. So the prediction for
North Carolina is that we’re going to be warmer, wetter, and that we’re going to have
rising sea levels. So as it gets warmer, we’re going to be less likely to have winter kill
of pests. As it gets wetter, we with our heavy clay soils in parts of the state are going to
have to be worried about roots being starved for oxygen, if there’s inadequate drainage.
Also be paying attention to erosion from heavy rainfall. And those along the coastal are
going to be dealing with rising sea level, which means there could be increased opportunity
for salt damage and all the problems of wetter soils. So, as we think about all these things that
are happening and what are our opportunities to mitigate some of those things and to protect
our landscape and our plants. We can think all the way through at every point that we
interact with the landscape. So we can start with with design and preparation, even site selection
before the design and prep. But plant selection and management strategies that we can
use once our landscape is in. And we need to be thinking about all that, but we also need to be
thinking about how is our gardening impacting the climate and climate change, and what are we doing
to contribute to those problems. And so some of that may have to be doing with you using
gas-powered lawn equipment, burning green waste. Putting green waste out for collection that has
to be, you know picked up and taken somewhere else and managed in other ways. Even just our
consumption practices. So anything that we buy had to be produced, it had to be packaged. It
had to be stored. It had to be distributed. Then it has to be disposed of. The packaging has to be
disposed of. So all of those opportunities that we have, are places where we have an opportunity
to reduce our impact and our garden’s impact on climate change. So some of the things we can
do around that is using human-powered tools, doing composting and stacking on site rather
than sending green waste away. And look at opportunities to reduce our consumption, whether
that’s, you know borrowing tools, purchasing high quality tools that will last, repairing items
rather than disposing of them and buying new. And then looking at ways to repurpose. So all these
are things you all know, right? We’ve have had experts come in and from the climatology
office and talk to you. We’ve had horticultural experts talk to you. You have a tremendous
amount of information. So, I thought what I would do today is just invite you on a journey with me
around how I have taken this information and tried to incorporate it into my decision-making process,
and actions in my own yard as I’ve looked at trying to make my landscape resilient. So, I’m
going to walk you through the site assessment, design, site prep, plant selection, and management
strategies that I’m using in my landscape. So, I recently bought two trees, two magnificent
beech trees. It takes three people holding hands–and have to be pretty large people–to be
able to fit your arms around either one of these trunks. These trees stretch from one side of
the property line all the way to the other side of the property line. They are magnificent.
You walk in under these and it’s just like an an embrace, and the temperature drops eight
degrees when you come in under the trees. And I was fortunate because the house came with
the trees. So that worked out well for me. And it also worked out well with me because
most of the landscape was a blank slate. So this–the whole front area–was just wide open.
Full sun, beckoning for pollinator plants. The backyard had dense shade in the back
under the magnificent trees, but also partial shade in the front. And there was lots
of opportunity to to paint on this open canvas. So we start with a site assessment.
It’s a half acre lot, full sun in the front. You know, partial shade, full shade in the back.
I started with, like all of us good gardeners do, with lots of soil tests. I knew that I was going
to be growing lots of different kinds of things in different parts of the yard. So I had
lots of soil testing done and got lots of great information about soil amendments, to create a
healthy soil environment in the landscape. This is east over on this side. It goes to west, so it
just kind of arcs across the yard. I’m at the top of a hill, so I have lots of of drainage.
This is the water flow on my property. And one of my first big challenges was storm water and
drought management. When I purchased the house, there was standing water in the crawl space. And
that was largely because the downspout from this corner of of the house and from this corner
of the house came right down to ground level and stopped. And so all of that water from
this half of the house went down and went under the house and stayed there. So, my
first order of of action was to buy cisterns. So, I put a cistern on each corner of the house.
I just did a close-up because this filter is just so cool. The gutter stops up above
it, drops whatever’s in the gutter. So, these are a lot of pine pieces. It drops
them there. They blow away and they don’t get stuck down in the bottom making a muck at the
bottom of of the cistern. So, I bought three cisterns. I put a a a big cistern on each corner
of the house and I put one at the back of the shed. And that was fabulous because it dealt with
these drainage issues that I was experiencing, but it’s also fabulous because that’s a heck of a
lot of water that I have available for irrigating my landscape. So, managing drought and
storm water runoff at the same time with one beautiful solution. So, that was great. And then
what I realized is the best place in the landscape, in my humble opinion, for the chicken coop was
to be right here in terms of visual impact on the yard and accessibility. However, that’s the lowest
point in the backyard. So, it’s got a lot of water headed to that space. So, I still had a
a big storm water issue to deal with. So, my first strategy for dealing with that was to do
some passive landscaping. So, what I did is I created swales by digging a shallow area in
front of these these boomerangs, right? So, I dug a shallow area in front and took that soil and
piled it up behind. So, it’s a kind of a depressed area with a raised area. Oops, we’re going to
go back. Sorry about that. So it’s a depressed area with a raised area. And that’s what each
one of these are. There’s a there’s a depression here. That soil was then built up around to make
a burm in the back. And what happens is the water comes down and it comes into this swale and
stays here. But when it overflows this swale, it flows around the end of the burm and goes into
this swale and catches here. And once it fills up enough here, it flows around to this one and
and continues like that. And so what it does is it slows the water down so you don’t have
as much erosion. It also gives water time to seep into the ground, which is beautiful because my big
magnificent trees are are right over in this area over here. So it allows the soil to be
a reservoir for water for the trees and it protects my chicken coop and my chickens’ feet
from getting wet, right? So that worked really well. You can see this is the morning
after a rain and you can see there’s still water in this swale that that was caught. So it’s
functioning and doing its job and it looks a mess right now, but as things grow
over it’ll be almost invisible. You really won’t even be able to see it. So the other thing I
did is I put a French drain in along the front of the the chicken coop. So what this does is,
all the water that’s coming in from this direction comes in. This cloth is covering a perforated
pipe. So the water comes in, it can go into that pipe and then it’s channeled out, down below the
chicken coop. So I straightened this out and then filled it in on top so it’s not visible.
But it’s a protective strategy for managing, keeping my chickens’ feet dry. The other thing
I did is I put gutters on the coop, right? So all of the rain that comes was landing on
the roof, was coming right down to the edge of the run and seeping under and doing. So now I
have gutters that go along the the chicken coop. They come down to this downspout which goes into
a rain barrel. The rain barrel is hooked up to an automatic waterer for the the chickens. So they
have water on demand that’s rain water. Beautiful. And the overflow for this barrel comes down
the backside and out underneath it, out past the the run below the chicken coop. So all
of that water that was coming down and standing in this area is now moved below the chicken
coop. And so far that’s all working pretty well. Firewise is another thing we need to be
thinking about in preparing for the future. Really not an issue for me, right? I have a very
large defensible space around my house. So, I didn’t have to think about this a whole lot, but
it’s something that you definitely want to have on your radar as we’re moving forward. So,
with the front yard design, imagine if you will, this is a big triangle. The driveway is right
here. This triangle comes here. Gosh, I’m just clicking accidentally. Okay, so this triangle
is mirrored on this side. So you have these two triangles and then there’s a 5 foot wide grass
pathway that makes kind of a rainbow on the front of the yard and goes right up to the walkway
to the house, and then it leaves this whole center moon, half moon shape to be a pollinator
garden, which is has been a lot of fun. So building healthy soil. I’m a huge fan of wood
chips. I have a relationship with chipdrop.com. This is the seventh of of my truckloads of of free
wood chips that they deliver to anybody. It’s a great system. So, if you want wood
chips, you go sign up on their website and then as arborists are looking for places to drop their
their wood chips after they’ve done work in a yard, they just look and see who’s the closest
person who signed up that they want wood chips, and they take them and drop them for you.
I’ve had chips as quickly as the next day, dropped off. I’m a big fan of wood chips because
there’s very little chance that wood chips come in contaminated. If you are importing compost,
it’s entirely possible that you’re also importing persistent broadleaf herbicides. So if
that compost has manure in it and if the the animal ate hay that was grown in a pasture
that was managed with broadleaf herbicides, those herbicides will pass all the way through the gut
of the animal into the manure and they will persist through the composting process. So they’re
still there. So that’s one way that broadleaf herbicides get into compost. Another way that
that happens is, you know, if you’re composting lawn clippings that are from a lawn that has been
managed with broadleaf herbicides. So it’s hard to check and know that. So I bring
in wood chips and that way I know they’re clean and they break down and do all sorts of great
stuff on their way to breaking down. I used them to suppress the turf. I had a lot of turf,
more turf than I wanted to try and manage. So, I put cardboard down and then put the wood chips
on top of the cardboard and that was tremendously effective. I only have a couple of places where
the persistent grass came through and so I’ll do a second round in those areas. But for the most
part it worked really well and it’s beautiful stuff. Right, this is a year later. I just kicked
with my boot to show that, you know, that has wood chips on the top, but right under that
is a beautiful compost that the wood has broken down and is already improving the soil
and feeding the microbes and creatures that live in the soil, and making it a much healthier
place than it was before it had that top coat of compost, of wood chips on it. So, my front
area, the pollinator half moon that I told you about, I started off with crimson clover, which
was spectacular. The bees really loved it. And I had cars stopping on the street to ask me
what the heck because it was just this, you know, magnificent spread of this crimson clover. And it
it was so for about two weeks. And unfortunately, I got a late start with the clover. And right
about the time it hit its peak bloom is when we had that really early blast of super hot
temperatures and it just went straight to seed. So it was a teaser of beauty. But I mowed
that down and then I planted buckwheat there and that has also been really, you know, attractive
to the pollinators, and been a pretty feature in the front yard and functional in a variety
of ways as a cover crop, as a pollinator plant. It’s really important to me to have
that area designated for pollinators because I also have bees, right? And better than that,
I have a beekeeper. So, I contacted the Wake County Beekeepers Association and I said, “I have
a great space for bees, but I don’t have the knowledge or skill to be a great beekeeper
yet. Do you have anyone who is in your program who would like a place to keep bees but doesn’t
have any place for them right now? And they put me in touch with Stella and Stella has set up
this top bar hive in my yard and she comes and manages it and I take care of the flowers for
them and we just have a great deal going. So move on to thinking about plants
and how do you select plants that are going to be resilient? How do you pick plants that are
going to be able to withstand both extremes and that will be able to adapt to the increasing
temperature as we warm. Well, of course, we all know that the best place to go for
information about selecting plants is the Toolbox. And I just want to give a huge shout out to all
of the Extension Master Gardener volunteers who have worked hard to make this an incredible tool.
Photographers, editors, researchers, there’s many, many people doing wonderful work that
has brought this to where it is and is going to continue taking it forward. The whole purpose of
this Toolbox, or the main purpose of this Toolbox is to help people pick the right plant for the
right place. So, it starts out with asking you what do you have to offer plants? And then
you put that information in, and it narrows the selection of options available to you to plants
that will thrive in those conditions. So, you want to think about, what do you have to offer plants
before you start worrying about what plants are going to do for you when you’re selecting plants.
The Toolbox has almost 4,700 plant profiles. Every single one of those has descriptions. There’s 96
data points on each plant. There’s images, videos, audio pronunciations, a wealth of information
available to you. And it’s much richer than most people yet know how to take advantage of.
So Scott Zona has done a superb job of creating a lot of how-tos to introduce you to different
things that you can do with the Toolbox and what’s the most efficient way to get answers to your
questions. So, if you click on the help button up here, that’ll pull up a list of all kinds
of things. If you’ve got an extra 10 minutes, go in and and check out one of those tutorials and
expand your world in terms of what you can accomplish. So, in addition to all of those things
on each plant, there’s cultivars and varieties for each plant that are listed. There’s plants
that this particular plant could be confused with. And I love this part, because
this is based on research that Paul Fance did when he was a professor teaching plant
ID. He kept track of every single wrong answer that students gave on his exams and we used that
database of wrong answers to compile this ‘plants most likely to be confused with’ tool. So, you
know, you can go in and say, “Okay, I think it’s this, but what is it frequently confused with”–
and be able to look at those and tease it out. So, that’s a really powerful tool that
we have. It also identifies plants that fill a similar niche. And that doesn’t mean they’re the
same color or that they’re, you know, that they look alike. What it means is that they have a
high number of the same tags. So they may fit the same functional role in the landscape, but it
may tease you into thinking about some different option than you would have
additionally done. So look at those that are in a similar niche. It provides alternative
plants. So if you pull up a weedy plant or an invasive plant, it’s going to give you options–
or plant that just has lots of disease problems. It’s going to give you other alternatives of
plants that have less problems. It provides lists of all the problems that that we know of that
the plant has and it links each of those to an extension publication that tells you how
to manage that problem. You know, my hope is that when you see a really long list of of problems,
you go, “Oh, there might probably better a plant that doesn’t have as many issues as this.” So,
it becomes a a warning signal as well as a a help strategy. And then, of course, there’s the
design gallery that shows you how these plants are being used in landscapes. Scott has also created
video tutorials and those are available in the same place when you hit the help button. So you
can use the Toolbox for climate change and making decisions around adding plants to your landscape
by taking advantage of the tool to look for plants that are going to be resilient. So,
one way is to click on Find a Plant and then you come down to cultural conditions and you select
soil drainage, and then select occasional flooding, and that’s going to give you a list of plants
that are are resilient to flooding. You can do the same thing for dry. You come to
find a plant, cultural conditions, soil drainage and click very dry and you can get, you
know, plants that can do that. You click both of those at the same time and you get plants that
that can withstand both of those conditions. One of the ways that you can look at selecting
plants that are going to continue to thrive in your landscape as temperatures overall increase
is using the Toolbox. Right? So you do find a plant cultural conditions, click on USDA plant
hardiness zones, select your hardiness zone, and then select the one that’s one
step warmer. So now if you’re going to have plants that thrive as is and plants that will
thrive as it continues to get a little bit warmer. So that’s a way to to to plan for
that kind of resilience in your landscape. Another way to gather this information from
the Toolbox is to look at the Resistance to Challenges feature. So, you click on
Find a Plant, you go to the landscape section, look at the resistant to challenges,
and then select whichever ones of those are important to you. So, you can select
drought, you can say resistant to storm damage, resistant to wet soils, resistant to wind.
You can pick any combination of those that you want. And every time you click on
one of these factors, it’s going to narrow the field of options to plants that
are resilient to all of those things. And of course, we also have information about
plants that are resilient to fire. The same way– Find a Plant, landscape,
resistance to challenges, fire. So management strategies: timing is a really important part of it. We have
planting calendars available to you that tell you when is optimal time to plant plants so that
they experience the least stress possible. You can push the edges of those envelopes of
time. But planting plants at the time when they are most likely to thrive and they’re
least likely to be vulnerable to insect damage, goes a long way to have them be able to
thrive in difficult, stressful situations. I have a really simple irrigation system that I love. It’s
just this little basic clock. I have this on my spigot in in the backyard and the front yard.
Each one of these gives me four different zones and I can subdivide each of those zones as many
ways as I want to. So this has, you know, four hoses and this goes straight to a drip irrigation
system. So it’s got a pressure regulator right there at the outset. But I can pick the
zone, and then I can set how many minutes I want it to run for and I click okay and on comes
the water and it runs for that long a time. I have some of them click directly to the clock.
Others of them my irrigation systems are set so I can just run the hose to it. These are on
the other side of the driveway. I don’t want the hose across the driveway all the time. So,
I bring the hose over. I click it in. It’s got a pressure regulator here. This poly tubing leads
to a T. I’ve got check valves on either side of the T. So, I can either open this one
and send the water down to the blueberries, or I can close this and open this one and send
it to the butternut squash and the loofahs that are down along the driveway. This poly tubing
leads to drip, laser drip, inline laser tubing that’s the drip irrigation, which I’m a
big believer in. It puts water right where you want it. It applies it slowly so it has time to
sink in. It doesn’t run off. And you can provide it over a wide area as opposed to if you’re
hand watering, you know, just in one space. I really encourage you. These lines come
out rather than taking them like this to a dead end. Loop them around. So this connects to the
poly here. This connects to the poly and you’ve got a closed system. So you’ve got consistent
pressure all the way through that line of tubing rather than having it go out for a long
way and having the pressure diminish as it goes out. This keeps it the same amount of
pressure on every single one of those admitters. So, it’s a really efficient way to manage
your irrigation system. So, by having raised beds, it allows water to drain away. It’s a lot
easier to add water than it is to get rid of water when there’s too much of it. So, it’s a little bit
hard to see, but this is an incline, right? So, I have loofah and butternut squash planted all the
way along the the base of this fence. The loofah is growing up on the fence and the butternut squash
is growing along. But if we have a heavy rain, the water can come down the drive.
The driveway is down here. So, the water can run off. My beds are all raised
up a couple of inches, which also allows water to drain if there’s too much. They
have, you know, they’re rich with organic matter, so they hold moisture, but they don’t get water-
logged because they’re raised. This is the driveway and you can see it’s a little bit
up. You all know about reducing green waste by not capturing your grass clippings, leaving
them there so that you capture and reuse the nitrogen that’s on there, organic matter. Lots
of good reasons not to bag your grass clippings. I’m a big advocate of composting and sometimes I
am a responsible compost mother and do a really great job of managing the compost so that I have
a hot pile and I have a compost thermometer and I go out and it makes me really proud. And other
times I’m a stacker, right? If I got too much other stuff going on, I just put stuff there and
then when I have time, I can cut it up into small pieces and work it in. But no green waste
leaves my property except if it’s diseased, right? So it gets composted in here.
And sometimes it pays to be a stacker, right? So this pumpkin vine is a gift from the compost
bin. That, you know, happened because my bin wasn’t hot enough to kill the seeds from the
pumpkin that I put in there. And I’ve had five pumpkins off here already. And it’s well on
its way to taking over the universe, right? It’s going like this in all directions.
So some sometimes that’s a fun surprise. So this is the back of the garage. This is the
cistern at the back of the garage that you can see. I also do a lot of stacking. So
the small branches, I just use them to make a a little visual barrier that sets off the
the shade garden that I’m slowly creating back here. It doesn’t keep anything out. My dog can
easily step right over it. But she knows when she’s out of bounds, you know, and I
know when she’s out of bounds because now I have a defined area. It just is I think an attractive
way in a natural landscape to to guide your eye around and just to find a space. I also have a
big pile at the very back of my property which is is an awesome habitat for lizards and birds and
other creatures. And I’m fortunate to have enough space where I can have this back behind the shed
and it’s not a visual thing in in my landscape, but it provides super habitat and it keeps
this stuff from needing to go to the landfill and I don’t have to burn it. My neighbor who lives
back over here burns almost every week. Sometimes more than once a week he burns. And so
this prevents me from creating smoke and having greenhouse impacts. So chickens transformed
the way I experience the garden. I used to like ‘I got to go weed, gosh’. And now it’s all
about, ‘Oh, I got to go find some greens for the girls’. So I can take weeds and put them in
and they’re thrilled to have them. I don’t worry anymore about weed seeds, right? Because if I put
them in there for the chickens, they love the seeds and if they don’t get them all and something
sprouts, well, that’s just micro greens for the girls. So it’s all good. They’re recycling
all of that into fertilizer and eggs. Some opportunities for avoiding gas powered tools:
I love this broad fork. You stand on the bar here and it pushes the tines down into the soil.
And then you grab the handles and you pull back on them and it lifts the tines through the soil,
which breaks the soil up. And then you use the handles and you pull
it back a foot or foot and a half and then you start over. You put your foot on top
of it, put the tines in the soil and pull back and it’s a really rhythmic, meditative, quiet
way to work with the soil as opposed to a roto tiller which turns everything up and is very
loud and is also gas powered or maybe gas powered. There’s also electric ones that
can use. But anyway, it’s a wonderful way to work with the soil. I used to use
a a real push reel mower when I had a less lawn to deal with, but I have graduated to an electric
mower now that I have so much ground to manage. But there’s all sort of opportunities to
avoid gas powered tools in your landscape. So this is just like a really quick whirlwind
journey through my experience with trying to make my garden climate resilient. So we talked about
the site assessment and decisions that I had made around water conservation; some design
strategies that use site prep strategies and plant selection, as well as management stuff.
So this is my landscape now. I have, you know, lots of fabulous flowers and a little craziness
going on here that a little overplanted. But this is what the front
part looks like and is fun. So, I would be really interested in any questions
that you guys have about actually trying to do these things in in your landscape. And
suggestions of other ways that you are finding to make your landscape climate resilient. So,
let me hear from you. What are you doing? Thank you. And I don’t know, Ariyah shared. Are
people allowed to talk or do you just have… They can. And we also have some questions.
So, do you want to… Cool. Yeah, thank you so much for all those excellent ideas. A lot of
them creative and all of them practical, that can be implemented ASAP. First question, how
long have you been working on your landscape? So, I’ve been in the house for two years.
I rented it for the first year. So, my landlady gave me permission to work on this
area that’s bounded by the sidewalk and the driveway the first and so the other part of
it for about a year. It’s been my sanity. So, I put a a lot more time maybe in it than a lot of
people would find fun. But for me, I I love to garden. And I love the hard work and I love to
see the the physical changes. A lot of what I do is not about, you know, physical changes.
So it’s fun at home to do something where you can, like today there’s more wood chips out than
there were yesterday. Yeah, so two years. Awesome. Regarding water management,
did you put rocks in your French drain? I did indeed. And that’s no small thing, but you
know, that’s a lot of bags of rocks to bring in, but there’s rocks underneath the drain and
there’s rocks around the side of the drain and there’s rocks on top. So, what that does is it
keeps hopefully the clay from coming in as much and clogging up the the pipe, and allows for
free flow of water in and out. So, yes, indeed I did. Great. Can you tell us the size of your
cisterns? Oh, I think they’re 800 gallons. That sounds about right. Yeah, that’s helpful. Can
you leave the irrigation system? So, those tubings and drip lines, do you leave all of that connected
over winter or do you take it apart and store it? I take my hoses and and drain them and store
them. But the irrigation, what I do is I take the end caps off of the irrigation system and allow
it to drain, but I leave them in place. I don’t pull up all the irrigation
and store it for the winter. No. What is the brand of the controller attached to the spigot
for irrigation? Oh, don’t know. Let’s see. And we can always find that out and include that in our
email. I think it was Eden. And I’m sure that there are other ones that are equally
awesome. This one I found and I have loved it. Has worked perfectly. I do take these in,
right? So I take those off in the winter time, drain them and keep them inside for the winter.
Okay. But it’s worked really well. Great. Those are great photos. We have another question.
How did you decide when and where to install your French drain? And did you do it yourself?
I did it myself, but my daughter helped. I decided where to put it because, let’s
see if we can go back here. I put it right along the front because the
water’s coming down here and I wanted to keep the water out of the coop. I started it back here
and ran it right along the front of the coop and then the outlet is down below the coop
over here. Okay, great. Thank you. I can show you. Let’s see if I back up more. You can get
an idea for the size of the cistern. So that’s just a regular size rocking chair, regular size door,
regular size drain. So you get a feel for it. I highly recommend doing tall thin cisterns as opposed
to fat wide cisterns, because a lot of what drives the force of the water leaving the cistern
is gravity, right? So, if you have more the weight of more water up high, it’s going to give
you more force coming down through the hose. You’ll have higher volume of water coming out,
more water pressure if you have a tall thin one. That makes sense. Moving to soil management.
A few questions about compost. How does mushroom compost compare to animal compost? Well, wow,
that’s a great question. I don’t know enough about mushroom compost to actually answer
that in an authoritarian way. I’m not sure. You know, do any of you guys know if there
are animal manures in mushroom compost? I’m not going to be able to give you a
definitive answer on that. Does somebody else on the line have an answer you want to share
around that? Charlotte, you want to weigh in? Yeah, I don’t have any experience with mushroom
compost either because we’re not, you know, a big mushroom producing area. I think a lot of
compost, which one is the most sustainable to use is which is produced locally or closest to you
rather than having to be trucked in or shipped in. I do think mushrooms are grown
on animal manure, but I’m not 100% sure of that, because we’re not, you know, a
mushroom producing area. So I yeah, I would lean towards using what’s available locally
and then just using it correctly. You know, incorporating it into your soil. I think any
composted organic matter is going to benefit your soil and your plants. So don’t, I
wouldn’t get too hung up on what it came from. And just focus on using it and applying it. Yeah.
And I would also share that Charlotte and I just modeled for you that it’s fine to say, “I
don’t know.” That’s a great answer when somebody asked you a question. And we can follow that
up with, I will get more information to Ariyah and she can share that with you in her follow-up
to this webinar. So, highly supportive of people not knowing
everything. You got it. Thank you. Are there concerns about walnut being in your
wood chips? You know, walnut does have chemical properties that suppress the growth
of other plants around it. So if you have an option not to choose a black walnut–when I
sign up for wood chips, they ask you, you know, what is it that you want? And I say, I don’t want
anything that’s been chemically treated, you know, with fungicides or insecticide. I don’t want
black walnut and I don’t… what was the third one? Something else that I don’t want. Anyways,
slipped right through my my brain, but you have a chance to put that down. I don’t know that they
totally, you know totally pay attention to that. I don’t know they guarantee that
you won’t get that but I try to avoid that. I don’t know you know how long that chemical
is there and acts as a suppressant. Might be something that you would want. Like for
me, actually, if I thought about it, that might be a good thing to put in the area where I have
pathways that I know I don’t want plants to grow, that would be a natural short-term
suppressant for the turf and other things under it. So, I guess what I would say is,
you know, if you can be aware of what you’re using and be thoughtful about where you put it based on
what attributes it has, it can all be good. Got it. That cool tiller that we saw. Where did you
get that? And then do you bring in top soil for your raised beds? I got this, I think from
Johnny’s. I had somewhere–make you guys seasick again–it’s a called a broad fork. I had one
specially made that was a heavier duty one that does better with with heavier clay soils, but it
was really heavy. I ended up donating it to the community garden because it was, I was really
glad I had it, but I was glad to pass it on, too. This one is a lighter weight. It
works well where you know–this is not going to work for you if you’re trying to to start off
using it in heavy clay soil. Once you have soil amended somewhat, then it becomes a really
powerful tool. I think I got it at Johnny’s Seed. Great. Another question
about the planting schedule you follow. Given climate change and this year being rough
for vegetables, what do you recommend in terms of a schedule? So, we have planting calendars and
those are done with broad recommendations. So, you have to kind of
decide what’s your comfort with risk, right? So, I’m pretty comfortable
with risk and I frequently plant lettuce three, four times before it it makes it, because
if I can get it in early and it’ll go, that’d be awesome. And I don’t mind planting
it again. But when you look at those calendars, I think that if this band is– either
end of this, you increase your risk the farther out you get to either side of the middle of
these strands. So you can just decide how how much risk you’re willing to take. And you
can try planting early. If it doesn’t work and you have time to plant again, then great.
So, I I rely on the calendars that we have, the vegetable planting calendars for
North Carolina. There’s one for the coastal plain, one for central, and one for western North
Carolina for vegetables. Okay. And we’ll include those links in the resources document. Oh, yeah.
Thank you. We do have a couple questions about, you know, gardening. Someone’s asking, “I
plan on starting a pollinator garden. Would it be a good idea to sow crimson clover to
the entire area before I plant flowers? You know what, I’m a big believer in cover crops.
It just depends on your patience and capacity timewise. So, I wasn’t in a hurry to,
you know, I was fine to dedicate a season, two seasons to strictly to cover crops.
And so if you have time and energy to do that, then planting crimson clover is awesome. You
can till that back in. It’s going to improve your soil and you’ll be much better off the next year
when you plant plants. But it takes a commitment of a season, right, to do a cover
crop. Or commitment of two seasons. And if if you do like I did, which I chose cover crops
that were awesome pollinator plants, then you get the best of of both worlds, right?
You’re improving the soil, making it better for for maybe a wider array of wild flowers in the
future, but right now protecting your pollinators while you’re improving the
soil. I don’t know if I mentioned that like one of the reasons I’m really excited to have this
large pollinator area up front is for my bees, right? So if it gets really dry and then
their other sources of nectar and pollen are drying up, I have the capacity because
I have these cisterns I can water that area and keep that rich in nectar and pollen
for the bees even if it gets bad. So that’s part of my resilience plan. That’s smart.
Here’s another scenario. In my yard, I’ve done most of what you’ve done in yours. I have a rain
garden and lots of mulched beds on a mostly flat 1acre that I’m rewilding. My biggest problem is how
to keep the running grass like St. Augustine out of my beds. Any suggestions other than edging? I
want to hear about it when you figure that out. I think that is a huge challenge and it’s
something that I’m dealing with every day. I have a friend who highly recommends an edger as
a tool that you take right along the edge of your bed and it cuts down and so kills
off those grasses that are creeping over. I have Bermuda, which is just a nightmare.
I just have to say Bermuda is a nightmare plant in terms of trying to keep it where you want
it. So I think, you know, having it heavily mulched, having a clear distinction about where
is the lawn area and where is the bed area so that you can see when things are out of bounds.
And dealing with it if you don’t have–I don’t have one of those edgers yet but it is something
I’m considering, because they have that huge sweep on both sides of that path to deal with. They
also make, you know, a tool that’s designed that, you know, it’s a blade on a stick and you
just, you basically are manually punching the ground to cut all those runners. That makes
sense. That’s a point about how many cool things you find when you put mulch out.
Lots of great stuff lives in it, right? And here’s a timely question and we will include
the link to the NC State Extension resource about flood water and food, but the question is,
if the floods come in and overwhelm the veggies, do you have any concerns about harvesting based
on what might be in the flood water? Absolutely. Absolutely, because you have no idea where that
flood water is coming from, whether you have septic systems or whether the
storm water management has been overrun. There could be all kinds of things in the
flood water that you have no control over. So, as Ariyah said, we have an excellent publication
that lays out exactly when you need to be concerned and what your options are around
managing produce that has been flooded, produce plants that have been flooded. Regarding
the design of your landscape, it doesn’t sound like you had to contend with an HOA. I
want to answer that question because this is my second yard in in North Carolina. My first yard,
I got reported to zoning and enforcement, I think seven times. My thing, it was
quite the journey. I wasn’t in an HOA, right? I’m in a neighborhood that I specifically
didn’t move into a homeowners association because I’m a free spirit with my garden, but I
was reported for well, first of all, my daughter had her train layout in the carport and so I was
reported and told you can’t use your carport for anything other than for your car or lawn
equipment. That wasn’t appropriate. And I had several trees taken down and they had wood
piles. So, I left the the wood chips in these huge piles, which was fabulous because my daughter’s
like two and a half when we moved here. So, our yard became mecca for all the kids in the
neighborhood and they would run to King of the Mountain on these different wood piles. And a zone
enforcement officer said I can’t find anywhere where it says that it’s illegal for you to have
wood chips in your front yard, but you need to know your neighbors don’t like it. Like, okay,
well, I was going to spread them anyway, right? So then my neighbor a couple houses down had a
tree go down and they didn’t know what to do with their tree and I’m like, “Can I have it? That’s
awesome.” Because it was big. And so I brought it. It’s in three different pieces and I laid it
out in the front yard and it made this magnificent jungle gym, right, that the kids could, natural
jungle gym. And then like you know every week you could reorder it and it becomes a whole new cool
toy. All the kids in the neighborhood love it. Zoning enforcement officer–it’s not legal in
the city of Raleigh for you to have dead wood in your front yard. You’ll have to move it. So like,
okay. So then I’m like, I’ve got the wood chips done. I’ve done
everything on this. So I planted buckwheat in the front yard to to grow buckwheat. And Miss
Bradley, you know, you’ve been reported for having weeds in your yard. And I’m like, “Okay, look, I
had wood chips. I had dead wood. My daughter had her train set. You’re right, but I do not have
any weeds in my front yard. And I took her out and I showed her and I explained cover crops and
doing she’s like, “You’re right. You’re fine.” So, she let me have the cover crops, which is
great. I can’t remember. There’s several other things. But at that same time, we
had adopted a cat, right? And then this cat was used to having high counters or cabinets
that he could get up on top of. And so, we didn’t have any of that. So, I was looking for
a cat tower. And, you know, you go to look at what that costs for a cat tower. I was like, “Oh
my gosh.” So, I looked on online at Craigslist and other places and I finally found this cat
tower for my cat is perfect. So, I called and I drove up to to pick up this cat tower,
and I got there and the garage doors open and the cat tower is right in the middle of the garage and
it’s just exactly what we wanted. And I go up and I knock on the door and the door opens and it’s
my zoning enforcement officer. And she’s like didn’t even miss a beat. She’s like, “Tell me
you’re not going to put this in your front yard.” She was great. I really appreciate
her. But anyway, no, I have not had a problem with my neighbors here. I have had a
lot more grace with moving and doing the transformation here. I will tell you
that where I used to live that started out with all that push back. Very quickly I
had people bringing their friends who came to visit them would come and want to
walk through the garden and people when they’re going on their walk at night would want to come
through and graze on blueberries and strawberries as they walked through. So there were a lot of
converts. It’s just people didn’t recognize where it was going. They thought the Clampetts had
moved in, which is probably not far off, but it wasn’t an instant love affair
with that gardening process. Well, it’s paid dividends. It’s absolutely glorious. Thank
you for sharing all of this with us. We will be sending out a resource doc and the webinar
recording in just a few days. And we appreciate everyone’s questions. because we had so many,
so much interest in what you’ve done Lucy from animals, soil, water, slope, like
just everything climate. So many ideas here that can put be put into action long term and near
term. So we sincerely appreciate you. Well, thank you. It’s been fun to be with you
guys. Appreciate all the work that you guys do and all the great you’re doing in
the universe. Thank you. Thank you. We’re gonna hand it over now to Matt Bertone
and Mike Munster to hear about our BOLOs. Okay, great. Mike, do you want me to go first?
Go for it. Alright. Well, thanks Lucy for that. I love your yard, of course. I love the dead
woody debris. That’s one of my favorite things. We live in an HOA neighborhood, but luckily it’s
full of free spirits, too. And I don’t, I only get letters for things that I know we need to
fix. So it’s, I leave a lot of dead wood in my backyard because that’s where all the cool beetles
and their parasites and all the things like that, all the really cool stuff. A lot of things
like big stag beetles and rhinoceros beetles, things like that love to feed on dead
wood when they’re young. And so if you’re saying, “Oh, well, I’m not seeing these things.” It’s
because these are, you know, you’re living in maybe a sterile environment. So messy is not bad.
It’s see, we got to get over that, I think. So, you know what? I’ve seen
click beetles, Matt. I have seen more click beetles than anywhere else. It’s been really
fun. The really huge eye click eye click beetles, the gray ones, but they’re very beautiful.
They only live under the bark of dead trees, dead pines, and hardwoods, depending
on the species, and they’re predators of the stuff that’s under those. So, if
you don’t have that good ecosystem, you don’t have those cool, beautiful beetles
and stuff. So, yeah, I’m a fan of it, obviously. So, all right. So, let’s
see. Why is it not showing? Let’s see. For some reason, it’s not showing.
There we go. Okay, cool. Alright, let me, let’s do some BOLOs. Let’s do some arthropod
BOLOs. Hold on a second. Let me start over, start at the beginning. Alright, so let’s talk about
some things to be on the lookout for. Hopefully you all can see this. Also I think forgot to
change the date up there at the top, but anyway, so some arthropods to look out for late July,
early August or so. You’re going to be seeing cicada killers. I’ve seen a lot of them this year.
There’s a lot of cicadas, too, and they seem to come out fairly early. I mentioned these last time,
but just be on the lookout for them. They’re not something that’s harmful. People do sometimes want
to get rid of them when they’re in a lawn or in an area, the ground in their yard, and they’re
really abundant, but they’re not aggressive, they’re not harmful, they’re not dangerous. Just part of our local nature. So, I understand if you want to kind of improve
your lawn and make it better that they don’t exist there, but they’re going to find those
spots they like, and you’re then supporting these very large wasps that hunt these cicadas
that, you know, is part of nature, local nature. We’re going to start to see a lot of large
caterpillars coming about. They’re going to be growing throughout the earlier part of this
summer and so now they’re going to be getting the biggest. You’re going to see some of the prominent
moth caterpillars. You may see some oakworms and you may even be lucky enough to see regal moth
caterpillars or the hickory horn devils. And, these are huge. These are about the size of
the palm of your hand. Basically, our largest caterpillar that we have. So, these things,
even though they’ll be munching on your plants, they’re going to turn into beautiful moths and
butterflies, things like that. And to continue with that, there are little caterpillars
are going to be in your garden, too. So, things like parsley worms, which grow up to
be black swallow tails. You have these cabbage worms, which will grow up to be butterflies, as
well. So, and then you have, of course, squash vine bores, which unfortunately we’ve been seeing
out there in certain agricultural settings right now. They will kill squash and cucurbits
unfortunately. But I kind of like them because they’re pretty, they’ve got pretty adults. But
these caterpillars, although kind of destructive sometimes, are again going to be developing into
some really beautiful insects that you may want to see as well. So maybe you can sacrifice
a few of your plants for these beautiful things. You’re going to start to see a lot of things
growing up more. So they’re going to be bigger now. They’ve been growing through the earlier part
of the season and kind of tiny and so you don’t really necessarily see them. But then you’re going
to start to see now the larger praying mantises, the larger garden spiders and whatnot, because
they’re attaining their bigger size. It’s also the time of year where you’re going to see a
lot of active wasps. Now, I’ve been getting a lot of calls about yellow jackets, the social
wasp nests, the paper wasp, the yellow jackets, the hornets. Their nests are becoming bigger and
bigger throughout the year, and we’re starting to get a lot more activity with them. So,
be careful out there, especially the ground nesting yellow jackets are going to be, can be
disturbed, come out and sting people. My wife got stung recently in the yard from not knowing
she was pulling weeds and didn’t know that there was a patch where these wasps were. There are
ways to control them and to discourage them. And we have some fact sheets online, but you’re
also going to be seeing a lot of solitary wasps out there. So, don’t, if you see wasps on flowers
or around hunting prey, just leave them be. These are good guys. They’re,
for instance, this blue winged wasp feeding on these flowers are parasites of scarab beetle
larvae. And so, they can help reduce things like Japanese beetles and whatnot. And if you don’t
like spiders–I love spiders–but I also love these wasps. You may be happy for the hunting wasp
that hunt spiders and such. And of course, there’s going to be lots of other activity, arthropod
activity. It’s the peak season right now. I’m excited to get out a little bit more when it’s not
so hot, to take some more photos. But I saw, Debbie Roos posted her garden pictures
and posted a really great photo on her site of one of my favorite insects, this Midas fly. It is
a fly even though it looks like a wasp, but a huge over an inch long, fly. The larvae are predators,
grub-like predators, that live in the soil or in rotten wood. Again, rotten wood being a really
good home for a lot of insects. And they’re completely harmless as adults. They kind of go
around and mate and kind of feed on nectar, things like that. Huge, huge flies, but completely
harmless. And you may see bugs all over your plants, things like that. But if you’re ever
curious whether something’s a pest or not, you can always submit photos to the clinic. I can tell you
what they are and whether or not they’re something to be concerned about. For instance, these
scentless plant bugs on this hibiscus fruit are not going to harm the plants. They’re feeding
on the seeds of the fruit. So again, they may look kind of concerning, but they’re not going
to kill the plant or harm it in any way. And so knowing that can be really helpful. So, moving on
to a couple things specifically to discuss, and things I’ve been hearing a lot about lately
or just want to make you make sure you’re on the lookout for–needle ants. So, a lot of people
have been hearing a lot more about needle ants in the media. And people are calling
me about them and whatnot. These are called Asian needle ants. Honestly, oftentimes,
I usually drop the Asian part just because there’s no thing called needle ant here. Um and uh
they are Ponerinae: Brachyponera chinesis. You can see here’s a queen. Here’s a worker and
here’s a bunch of workers with their pupae. Those are the cocoons of the larvae that are developing
into adults. And this was under a paving stone in my yard. Now the recent media makes it
seem like they’re something new to North Carolina, but the species has been in the US for a long
time and in North Carolina, it’s been one of the most common ants in yards for the past 20
years at least. I see them very commonly in my yard. They’re crawling around on my sidewalk.
I have been stung by them a couple times. But it’s mostly when they fall down your clothing
or you lean on them or something like that. They’re not like fire ants where if you open a
nest they’re going to go pouring out and attacking you, but they do have a painful sting. It’s kind
of like a needle as the name describes. And unfortunately, some people are actually allergic
to their venom and can have anaphylaxis. So that’s where I think the major concern that’s
happening nowadays, and the media reporting finding new states and everything, is concerned
about now reports. And I’ve gotten a lot of reports about this. So be careful. I would
keep an EpiPen, you know, and if you really are undergoing anaphylaxis get to an emergency
room if you don’t have treatment. But be aware of your kind of interactions with
these ants. They’re kind of not super fast moving, can be, but are often kind of moderately speed ants
walking around. They’re kind of long. I feel like they’re kind of long and sausage shaped, a little
bit dark, almost black to brown ants. And so that’s how you can identify them. Another
thing, a couple other things to look out for are spotted lantern flies. Unfortunately, there
are more areas in the State where they’re becoming established right now. It’s an uphill battle
and they’re going to be here widespread before we know it. But, it’s still a little slow, but
we’re finding them in other areas of the State now. And Joro spiders like the garden
spiders are getting larger. These are going to start to become more noticeable in areas where
they are now. We often see them more around the western-central part, around Charlotte, areas
like that, but they can be found lots of places. And don’t confuse them for our native golden silk spiders, which are more common on the coast, although we’ve had photos from campus and then more in recent years. And so note the color pattern differences, the little tufts of hair on the gold silk spider versus the knot on the Joro spider. But functionally these are harmless spiders. They’re very large and impressive, or you might say scary, but they are completely harmless
to humans and so very timid as well. So even though they are looking scary, they’re not
going to be anything of concern. More wasps and things like that. We’re getting a lot of calls
about large wasps. Again, Eastern cicada killers are very common right now, and be aware of what
they look like. They have these bold yellow and black patterns on the abdomen, pointed abdomen,
very large round eyes without a notch in them. And a few other characteristics shown here.
There’s a lot of European hornet colonies as well around. Note that they have reddish head and
smaller eyes and they also have the stripes on the abdomen that have little teardrops or little
spots associated with them. The Northern giant hornet, or the murder hornet, or Japanese
giant hornet, whatever you’re going to call it, is now apparently been eradicated from Pacific
Northwest and we have no records from North Carolina as well. But, in Georgia, we feel like this is probably
pretty established and may spread, is the yellow legged hornet, which is a bit smaller than the
other species. But we’re still on the lookout for. So, if you see any hornet that you’re not
sure about, let us know. Especially these very dark ones with the yellow legs. We’re hoping
that they’re not in North Carolina anytime soon. Back to spiders. I’ve been getting a lot of calls
about large black spiders wandering around, that people have never seen before. And unfortunately,
they take a photo or hold up the lens to the spider and you have AI online identify it and
AI invariably comes back with this is a deadly Australian funnel web spider. Unfortunately, don’t,
just don’t use AI to identify these things or, you know, use it as a first pass. But definitely
find out from others or look around because this is actually our native trapdoor spider, Ummidia,
and they’re rarely seen. And so people say, “I’ve never seen this before. This is the first
time I’ve ever seen it. Must be something exotic, whatever.” It’s rarely seen because they often
stay underground in their tunnels. And females basically stay there their entire life. And so the
males that are out and about are looking for females to mate with and they will then die
after they’ve done so. And one thing to note is that this very good characteristic
for this genus is this saddle-shaped segment on the third leg, third walking leg. And
finally rain is bringing flatworms out. I should and I want to really clarify some
things. So these flatworms, most of them are established. We don’t have very many native
ones, very few species, but most of the flatworms you’re going to see out there are non-native,
but they’ve been here for a long time. And so, we are not actively tracking or reporting
flatworms. Though, if you do, on our fact sheet, we have a link to iNaturalist, which
shows the current flatworm species that have been identified in North Carolina. If you find
something that’s wildly different, or you suspect is different, we’d like to know, but there’s no
action being taken against them. And we have a lot of species that are here commonly.
And so we’re not really reporting on those common species. But we did, as you might have
heard recently, we did have a new species we identified. The clinic got the samples and we
sent it off for identification. It turned out to be a species that is new to science. So that
should be actually added to the list once they get it on there. And with that, I’ll answer
some questions. I’ll let Mike take over. Let’s see. We do have a question in the
chat. Are needle ants found in all counties in North Carolina? I have not
looked, but I would assume so. They are the most abundant ant I would say out there.
The most common ant. Unfortunately for us, they have displaced a lot of ants. But
I would say I haven’t looked in the mountains, but I’ve found them everywhere. I’ve even been
kayaking before and I saw a little nest coming out of the shoreline of the lake and I was like,
“No way this could be needle ants.” And it was. Sure enough it was needle ants. So, they are super,
super common and I would just assume you could probably find them everywhere in North Carolina.
And have there been any reports of jumping worms? Okay. So just like the flatworms, jumping worms
have been in the US and in North Carolina for decades, almost a century basically. So again,
they’re very sporadic and we have a fact sheet on jumping worms. They’re very sporadic, but
they exist here. And they have been here for a long time. So if you haven’t seen them, you’re
lucky you don’t have them, but we do see sometimes people importing mulch or things like that
infested with them. They’ll get them in the yard. There’s no control
options as far as chemicals and things like that. So really just making sure you’re introducing
soil, things like that that’s not infested, collecting and killing any adults that you see
earlier in the year, because they will breed in the summer, late summer and early fall.
Luckily, they only breed one time a year. So if you reduce, you know, get them out of the
environment, you may reduce the populations in the site. So yeah, but they’ve been here for a long
time. Again, there’s a lot of people, you know, just discover these things and the media talks
about them and then you realize, oh, they’ve been here forever. like the needle ants. I get all
these calls like, “Oh, should we watch out for needle ants?” I’m like, “Well, you’ve been living
with needle ants in North Carolina for 20 years.” So, if you haven’t noticed them, then I guess that’s good.
But, it’s nothing new, let’s just say. Headlines kind of imply breaking news, right? So,
thank you for that clarification. Those are the questions I see. I think we’re safe to
kick it over to Mike. Alright. Good afternoon, everyone. I want to mention that this
is very difficult because who wants to follow a presentation like Lucy’s and then a presentation
like Matt’s. But we will attempt to do a few BOLOs here. Also, first a–I wouldn’t call it
a shout out, but a special greeting to those who suffered the effects of Chantal earlier this
month, and also those who may still be recovering from Helene up in the mountains. And also at
the top here, a quick apology. I’m transmitting, broadcasting from the lab and you may hear some
background noise from the sterilizer that’s running. The general garden BOLOs for August for
our area. Well, with all the moisture we’ve had, we’re certainly going to be looking at a lot
of things growing, and among them, we may see some sooty molds, which will be the ones growing
on insect droppings mostly on plants. So, to the extent that the insect droppings are
getting washed off, we may actually see less of that. That’s just speculation, but I do expect
that we’ll be seeing more of the slime molds. We talk a lot about the dog vomit slime mold pictured
here on the left, excuse me, on the right, but we’ll see others too like the Physarum that
you see here growing on the grass and on the clover in the center picture. And all kinds
of mushrooms and conks. This is an example of one that we wouldn’t like to get sent in as a sample,
but because of its condition. This was some kind of an earth ball that maybe a scleroderma
that came in in January of this year. So, make sure you touch base with us if you are interested
in submitting any samples of mushrooms or conks. Get some good pictures both above and below and
reach out to us. Like Matt, I have a couple of BOLOs that I want to do a special feature on and
I’m subtitling this ‘Taking our Lumps’ and you’ll see why in a moment. But on this whole idea of
conks, this is a wood decay fungus that is called brittle cinder. And the last two years we’ve
had quite a few cases of it. It really caught my attention. I was first introduced, if you want
to say it, to the existence of this fungus when the late great Dr. Chuck Hodges had identified it
on a tree that failed when a climber was up in it and unfortunately he died. This is a fungus
that can cause really catastrophic weakening of the structure of the tree before you see symptoms
in the crown. So it is one that you worry about. In its early development, it’s kind of a silvery,
crust-like material on the surface of the wood. Or you’ll see in next picture some development in
the soil of the second stage there. But the mature fruiting bodies are these brittle, we say
carbonaceous, lumpy growths at the base of the tree, could be out on a root, and that is the stage
that produces the sexual spores which I’ll show you in a moment. Here’s a closeup of that stage.
You’ll notice the kind of bumpy general growth and the little dark pimples. You get a closer shot
of those if you were to split it. And again, this is very very brittle. You can split that
and you see that each of those little pimples is the opening of one of these chambers where
the spores are produced inside the fruiting body. So if you do see something like this, it’s most
common on maples, but also it can be on beech, it can be on hickory and chestnut, excuse me,
hickory and pecan, on oak, be on quite a few different species of trees, but mostly those. The
other thing that uh seemed like it was common this summer so far was Southern blight, aka Southern
stem rot. The fungus is now scientifically called Agroathelia rolfsii. Fortunately we often refer to
this just as rolfsii. So when they changed it from Sclerotium rolfsii to Athelia rolfsii to Agroathelia rolfsii, it
didn’t really bother me too much. This is a fungal pathogen of many different herbaceous
plants. Although it can even get on things like apple seedlings, but mostly it’s going to
be a concern for the vegetable garden and the and the flower garden. Here is some cabbage
from last month that had it. And you can identify it often yourself because, under the humid
conditions, you’re going to have first the mycelium, this mat of growth here, and then the unmistakable
sclerotia that are forming there, the survival structures about the size at maturity, about
the size, shape, and color of a radish seed. Now to just our general things to be on the
lookout for: First, in the flower garden and the ground covers, your annual vinca, your
Catharanthus, watch out for Phytophthora root rot and aerial blight and also Rhizoctonia aerial blight.
Pachysandra, especially if it’s getting too much sun may be susceptible to Volutella blight illustrated
here, in the second from the left. Rudbeckia or our blackeyed susan, Septoria leaf spot. You may even
see downy mildew. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that on on rudbeckia. And zinnia, the spots by
Alternaria fungus or Xanthomonas, a bacterium spots both on the leaves and on the flower petals.
And many hosts, you’ll be seeing powdery mildews, of course, such as coreopsis here in the third photo.
On our trees and shrubs, multiple hosts will have the possibility of heat and drought stress,
improper planting, j-rooting, girdling roots, etc. We had a sample photo sample come to the
clinic recently where it looked like a tree had grown and incorporated the landscape fabric into
it to the point it was apparently girdling the tree. Phytophthora and armillaria root rots
common on multiple hosts. Flowering cherry, we’ll start to see the shot hole come on strong
and the defoliation associated with that, the leaf yellowing and also we get decline and death
of flowering cherries due to multiple factors. Unhappiness with our climate, for example. On
oak, bacterial leaf scorch, slime flux coming out of the trunk and Tubakia leaf spot. And I want to
mention a little bit about that in a moment too. So the photo here with the dark background that is
a classic bacterial leaf scorch symptom. You see the kind of marbling patterning to the
discoloration. You’re kind of moving in from the edges of the leaf. And I’m going to compare that
to a very interesting sample we got in a moment. And powdery mildews again: flowering dogwood, viburnum,
Euonymus, also magnolia get hit pretty hard. And you can see it on things like Leucothoe and tulip popular,
although it doesn’t look like the classic powdery mildew that we think of. So, here’s a
case of Tubakia leaf spot on oak from back in August of 2019 on campus, on NC State campus and it was a typical leaf spot and was causing a lot of defoliation. But the sample we got in recently that Dean Fox brought by, he suspected bacterial leaf scorch, and it is a reasonable suspicion. But I thought when I got a closer look at it that it didn’t look quite right. You had these sort of V-shaped lesions or necrosis and not the general marginal inward movement. You didn’t have the kind of banded pattern to it. So I incubated some of these leaves and turned out
it did have a lot of this fungus Tubakia on it. So it’s kind of an interesting and unusual symptom
associated with that fungus. But leaf drop again was a problem on this tree. In the fruit
orchards and vineyards on apple, Marssonina leaf blotch to look out for is
a relative of our black spot fungus on rose. And you can see the kind of feathered edge to the
spots there. The fruits of apple be on the lookout for bitter rot and then the superficial
sooty blotch and flyspeck fungi. The grape problems that we may see this month would be black rot
on the fruit of bunch grapes also downey mildew. Black rot on the muscadine is going to show up
as a leaf spot. And on either one, we’ll start to be seeing Pierce’s disease, which is caused by
Xylella fastidiosa, the bacterium responsible for the bacterial leaf scorch. Peaches:
brown spot, and scab on the fruits to be looking out for. Quickly to the vegetables: on beans,
anthracnose and Cercospora leaf spot. Cucurbits: downy mildew hasn’t been too bad a year for downy
mildew of cucurbits here in North Carolina so far, but we will see powdery mildew, especially on
squash and pumpkin. Leaf spots on tomato, including bacterial leaf spot, Septoria leaf spot, and gray
leaf spot. And blight such as early blight and possibly late blight. Not a real major problem in
our home gardens in in North Carolina for tomato. The wilts of tomato, both bacterial and Fusarium.
A couple others, for example, the Agroathelia rolfsii, the southern blight
can get on tomato as well, and growth cracks. Multiple species, always check the roots. One of
the things to look for, see if you’ve got galls. That would be a signal, a sign, a symptom
of root, knot nematodes. In turf grasses, brown patch on fescue and rye grass. Large patch
on the warm season grasses. Ferry ring on any turf grass, gray leaf spot. Now, this is not the
same fungus that causes gray leaf spot on tomato. The confusion of common names there on multiple
turf species. Summer patch on Kentucky bluegrass and fine fescue and rust on multiple turf species,
you can see illustrated here on the lower right. And as always, if you just can’t get enough
BOLOs from hearing Matt and me every month, you can go to our web page and click on
the BOLO link for a month-by-month list of what to be on the lookout for. Thank you.
Mike, we do have a couple questions, but I think we’ll address those in the resources
doc so we can get um this wrapped up in about 10 minutes. Give Charlotte some time to cover Plant
These for Pollinators. Thank you, Matt, Mike. Charlotte, there we go. Yes, when I shared my
screen, everything moved and I could not find the unmute. So, there we go. So I’m really
excited about Plant These for Pollinators plant this month. It’s one I’ve–when I
first thought of doing this segment, this was the first plant that came to mind. But before we jump
into that, just a reminder to everybody that all of the slides that have been featured in the Plant
These for Pollinators series are available to you. The link here and the QR code will allow you to
view them and you can download them and use them for Extension programming. So, we’re going to talk
about mountain mints. And every list you will ever look up of best plants for pollinators is going to
have mountain mint. This is a group of plants. as the name implies, they are in the mint
family. They do have a minty-like fragrance. their genus is Pycnanthemum. So, they are
related to things like peppermint and spearmint, but they are in their own genus. And there are
multiple species native throughout the Southeast. Most of them occur in North Carolina. So,
no matter where you are in North Carolina, you’re likely to be able to find mountain mint
growing wild in different habitats and find one that will grow in your landscape.
They’re all herbaceous perennials, so they do die down in the winter. And fair
warning though, they are in the mint family. Many of them do spread. So, you want to be very
careful about your placement in the landscape. So that you put them somewhere that if they are
spreaders then they have that room to move and kind of create wonderful colonies that
will be abuzz with bees without becoming an issue and overcrowding other plants.
They are rarely browsed by deer or rabbits. They are generally quite tough plants.
They are extremely attractive to pollinators and no matter what type of mountain mint you
approach, you’re probably going to see a lot of different type of bees. I also see a lot of
different types of wasps on mountain mint. And quite a few, especially smaller butterflies
and skippers. These aren’t the type of plants though, because they aren’t like super, super showy.
They don’t have really large colorful flowers. So, you might not find them at your big
box stores or regular retail outlets. So you may have to look for them in nurseries that
specialize in perennials and native plants. And when we do look at mountain mint in bloom, it often has the look, this kind of frosted look. And there are both flowers and bracts here making up the whole inflloresence that we see. And the flowers are actually really pretty small on mountain
mint. You see them in the center. And that’s what the bees and the wasps and the pollinators
are visiting to gather nectar and pollen. So they’re quite small, but they’re surrounded in
many species by these bracts, which are modified leaves that have this frosted look that makes
the, what we would call the bloom look much bigger and draws your attention as well
as the attention of our pollinators. So, we’re going to look at three
species. And I do have fair warning, the ones that are more spready, and a little
more vigorous in the landscape are noted. So, we’re going to talk about the Hoary Mountain
mint, which is probably one of the most attractive species from a human standpoint.
Pycnanthemum incanum; the blunt mountain mint, Pycnanthemum muticum; and then one, this
one you’ll notice doesn’t have the spread warning because it’s not as aggressive. It
does spread but it’s more like a a nice mat that just spreads a little bit each year. And
that one’s the narrowleaf mountain mint. So, we’ll start off with the Hoary Mountain
mint, which Hoary refers, means frosted or or kind of covered in white, which you can see
by the picture, which I just took last week at the JC Raulston Arboretum. This group of
plants are or is is Pycnanthemum incanum. They all used to be one big genus, one big family
all together or one big genus altogether. But more recently, these have been separated out into
multiple different species. So I’ve got those, the the similar species listed below. Pycnanthemum
loomisii and Pycnanthemum pycnanthemoides. So when you approach a Pycnanthemum that has this look,
you know sometime it could be really difficult to tell exactly is this incanum, is this pycnanthemoides.
Both incanum and pycnanthemoides are more spreading. Whereas true Pycnanthemum loomisii
tends to be more of a clumper. Sometimes though they may be kind of
mixed up in the trade. So you know I would observe a plant a little bit before you maybe
place it in the landscape. There are a couple of cultivars that have been selected that are
more clumping: Eagle rock and stowaway. Stowaway actually came from the Daniel Stow Botanical
Gardens in North Carolina. But this Pycnanthemum incanum, and these other close relatives all
have very similar growth habit. As far as height, 2 to four feet tall, and they have these kind
of pale pink flowers that are surrounded with these large silvery bracts. And they’re summer
bloomers. This one, I would say, is going to be happier with a little more moisture than the
other two species we’re going to look at. So, give this one, you know, the the nicer site,
or maybe some shade in the afternoon, and it will reward you with lots of blooms
and lots of pollinators. The QR codes on the slide will take you to the link to this plant or
the profile of this plant in the Plant Toolbox. As well, the link that’s embedded in the plant
name, so you can learn lots more about each of the plants featured. So, this is one thing you may
want to observe if you’re not sure a plant you’re about to put in the ground is likely to spread by
roots. Take a look at the root system in the pot itself and look for rhizomes. On perennials,
these tend to be kind of wrapping around the pot. Same with woody plants as well. But,
you can even see, if you can just make out some little leaves just kind of coming out. Those are
going to be the growth point. So, as soon as that hits the surface and gets some light, that’s going
to turn green and grow up into new stems. So, these are rhizomes. This is a spreading type of
root system. Technically, it’s a modified stem, but it’s there to help the plant spread. And
you can see that these rhizomes are thicker than just your normal roots, your feeder roots that are
helping feed the plant. And when you see this, know you need to put it in a place where it’s
going to have plenty of space to spread out. So, another spreader is the blunt mountain
mint or Pycnanthemum muticum. I should note that the common name, mountain mint, would make you
think these only grow in the mountains, but as already mentioned, they are common throughout
the Southeast and across North Carolina. And they all have multiple common names. So, I’ve
kind of chosen one that I see more frequently. But you’ll, like with all common names,
you will see many different references to these plants. That’s why it’s always important to be
aware and to know the scientific name as well. So, blunt mountain mint is Pycnanthemum muticum.
It is definitely an aggressive spreader. Also, you know, similar height as we looked at
before, 2 to four feet tall. It has these little tiny white or sometimes purple spotted flowers.
They also have silvery bracts, but the bracts are a little smaller than on the incanum species. So,
and they’re a little kind of shorter, which is what gives it that name, blunt mountain mint.
This one’s very tough, very drought tolerant. It’ll pretty much survive in most places. The
leaves are also very fragrant. And it is also the one that you will see in study after study top
rated for pollinator activity. This is just one study from Penn State, where they looked at–now I
think it’s around 70 different species of native plants. And for three years they counted the number
of pollinator visits and you can see Pycnanthemum muticum, which they’re referring to as
clustered mountain mint, another common name. It not only was the top, it just blew the next plant
out of the water, which was Solidago rigida, type of golden rod. And golden rods are also renowned
for being great pollinator plants. so if you want to see pollinators and a just huge variety of
pollinator activity, this is the plant you want. But you want to give it plenty of space. And I’m
going to try playing this short video that I took. I have a meadow area in my landscape and
I have a ginormous swath of this Pycnanthemum and you, as soon as you get close to it, you hear
the bees. There’s also going to be a bird calling. So that might overwhelm the sound
of the bees, but hopefully the sound of the bees will come through. And if not, at least
you’ll see them moving around on the screen. Okay, I could hear the bird, but not so much the
bees. But I could see all the bees. There were lots of honey bees on it this day moving
around. So, it is always so active with pollinators, but as I mentioned, it does need
room. So, you will want to put it in a meadow or natural area. And just to kind of give you an
idea of its spread, this is just on the edge of the woods at the side of my property. I had
a little piece of this plant like that I dug up. It was pretty much bare root and I just found a
spot I could actually get it in the ground and put it there and this was about six years ago and
now it’s over 10 by 10. Just this spot right here. And so it’s had absolutely no care
and it’s had to compete with all kinds of other things. You could see there’s trees coming
up with it. It’s competing with golden rod and it’s really holding its own. There’s also
a really strong understory or ground cover of Japanese honeysuckle here it’s competing
with. So, this is a tough plant that will take all kinds of conditions. But it does need
lots and lots of space. So, you’ve been warned, but you’ve also been hopefully enticed to
find somewhere that it will work for you. And if you only have smaller beds and don’t have
room for a large spreading type of mountain mint, then definitely go for tenuifolium,
the narrow leaf mountain mint. It is a little smaller than the other species we
looked at. It spreads more like a carpet, so each year the the kind of mat it forms just
gets a little bit bigger. It’s very manageable. It grows in sun or shade, well- drained
soil. It’ll take wet or dry conditions. It has white flowers as you can see in the
picture. It doesn’t have the showy bracts. So, it does look a little different there because
the flowers themselves are a little larger, I think, but the bracts aren’t there. And also,
the very narrow leaves are quite a nice texture, but they are less fragrant than the other species.
So, this is the one for more refined spaces or places where you don’t have an area where you can
let it run wild. And there’s actually several more mountain mints covered in the Plant Toolbox.
So I encourage you to check them out and learn all about them and find which is the right
one to add to your landscape. And with that, just checking the chat really quick. Just
some compliments, or I think some people saying they have mountain mint and it’s a great plant for
pollinators. Great. Thanks for sharing. We’ll just finish up with a few announcements. Of course,
I hope everyone has taken a look at the International Master Gardener Conference. There’s an
amazing lineup of speakers and topics and registration still open. It’s open through August
15th. And not only when you register will you be able to attend the live sessions, because this is a
virtual conference, but you’ll have access to all the recordings through the end of January. So, you
don’t have to worry. There’s lots of concurrent sessions, but if there’s two or three things going
on at once, you can choose which one you want to join live and then catch up on the others with
the recording. If you missed either of our recent continuing education webinars, those recordings
are posted on the North Carolina Extension Master Gardener intranet, on the continuing education
page, and they were both excellent. I encourage you to check them out if you weren’t able
to join in live. If you want to receive more frequent updates from the state program about
things that are going on, like webinars that are coming up, and recordings being posted, sign
up for our Google group that we call our breaking news Google group, where we send maybe
one sometimes maybe twice a week an email. So, we’re not going to hopefully overwhelm you, but
it will give you those more frequent updates. And we hope everybody has their calendar marked
for the Great Southeast Pollinator Census next month. Actually just a month away from today.
There was a fantastic webinar July 10th. Matt Bertone was one of the excellent speakers
talking about insect ID. If you missed that, the recording is available. And we’ll
add that to the resource doc that goes out after this. There’s another webinar coming up
August 14th. If you haven’t registered yet, please be sure to do so, because you’ll
need to register to get the Zoom link. This is posted on the EMG intranet calendar.
It will take you to a link where you can actually register via Google form to get the Zoom
link. And, in addition, Amanda Wilkinson, who is our state coordinator for the Great
Southeast Pollinator Census in North Carolina, has created an amazing array of resources
that are available on the website for the Great Southeast Pollinators. This is in North Carolina.
So, encourage you to go there and explore things. You can register an event if you’re holding a
local event. You can talk about your resources. You can explore resources and guides for different
groups and there’s wonderful marketing materials. And I should say that’s Amanda Bratcher. I always
want to refer to her by her maiden name. And then just a few last things. Really encourage
you to check out the Gardens, Lawns, and Landscape online course series that Scott Zona leads and
teaches. These are based on the Extension Gardener Handbook. They’re a great refresher from master
gardener training. They are not master gardener training itself. They’re open to the public.
Anybody can take them. And the next course coming up is landscape materials and design, starting
September 1st. So it is open for registration. Also open for registration is a couple of
the therapeutic horticulture online courses. Both the Intro to Therapeutic Horticulture, which
is the beginning, the one you need to take I think to move forward through the other classes.
And then if you’re already working through that program, Course Three I believe is also still open,
Accommodating Diverse Populations. That one will begin August 11th. Alright, everything Plants Pests
and Pathogens on the Extension Master Gardener intranet on the North Carolina site. So check it
out. You can find the recordings, you can see the schedule. And of course, submit your photos for
our August webinar. It’s always an exciting one, always one that’s a lot of fun and very
interesting to see what comes in. And of course, we like to put Matt and Mike to the test to
see how well they could do and and see how many of the the submitted images they can diagnose,
just based on the pictures and the information that comes along with them. So we look forward to
that and look forward to seeing you then. And we will have a chance also to say I don’t know
quite a few times as every year when this comes up. But yeah, it’s a great session.
Absolutely. It’ll be a good opportunity to model that behavior as we talked about earlier and
also just to get some tips on how to take and submit good images that will increase the
chances that it could actually be diagnosed. Alright, thank you everybody for joining
us today. Thank you Matt and Mike. Thank you Lucy. I just have to say that was such
a wonderful and engaging way to present the information, to tell us how you have
made your landscape more resilient. And really appreciate you joining and and sharing
that with us today. Yeah, thanks everyone for attending and thank you Charlotte and
Ariyah for organizing and of course Lucy, great job in beautiful yard. Thank you very
much. It’s a pleasure to be with you guys today. Have a good month everyone. Take care.
Yeah, everyone and be well. Stay cool.
2 Comments
Lucy you always do such an amazing job!
This is one of the best classes I've taken on Extension's website. Lucy is an inspiration with her creative efforts. What a lovely yard. Blessings…